“My father,” replied Bruce, “if you think our friend might be on that lake, we should go there and look for him. We might build a raft and leave our canoe at this place.”
“My son,” Ganawa answered, “it is much hard work to build a raft on which three men can travel and, when you have built it, you will find it hard to travel on it, because it travels very slowly and you cannot steer it against the wind. And sometimes your raft will float to-day, but to-morrow it will sink, because the logs have sucked up much water during the night. If we go we must carry our canoe across the hills to the lake. [[156]]We can leave our tepee here and take only our blankets and some dried meat.”
So they tied their blankets and provisions in the canoe and started out. Ganawa and Bruce carried the canoe while Ray was told to walk behind and mark the trail, which he did by blazing some trees and breaking the tops of some brush.
“It will be much easier for us to return over a blazed trail,” said Ganawa, “and we shall be sure to strike the place where we left our tepee and other things.”
Ganawa held a northwesterly course, directing himself by the sun. “We cannot miss the lake,” he remarked, “because it is six leagues long.”
As Ray worked along, blazing more trees and breaking more brush than was necessary, he had the feeling that they were all hopelessly lost in a trackless wilderness. “We shall never find Jack Dutton in a hundred years,” he thought. “I wish I were back home in Vermont. I could never find my way back to the Big Lake, and I don’t [[157]]believe Ganawa knows where we are. We have passed a thousand bays and I can’t tell one from the other.”
They might have been travelling three hours when Bruce gave a shout, and he and Ganawa set the canoe down for a rest, as they had done many times.
“What have you found?” called Ray and ran over to see.
“Look ahead,” answered Bruce, “and see.” Before the travellers lay spread out a most beautiful sheet of blue water, for the sky was clear and the wind had not yet sprung up, as it nearly always does in the middle of the forenoon.
“But there are no big hills around the lake as there are around Lake George and Lake Champlain back home,” remarked Ray. “It is all just a wild country, not a soul living in it. I wish we were home, Bruce.”